5 top tips to declutter your home and your mind

Research from the University of California shows that a cluttered home can affect your health and well being, and even encourage anxiety or depression. When you’ve got a busy life, getting your house neat and tidy can seem an insurmountable task – and keeping it that way even more impossible. But a tidy home helps to boost your spirits and your energy levels, so it really is worth making the effort.

Here are our top tips to help you clear the clutter and get your mojo back.

1. Write a to-do list. If you don’t plan to succeed you plan to fail, so take just a few minutes to make a step-by-step, room-by-room plan of action. Work your way through the list steadily and surely. Only start the next task when you’ve finished the previous one.

2. Keep up the momentum – don’t leave it too long between each task or you may find yourself having to redo previous work. If decluttering a whole room in one go seems too daunting, set yourself a series of smaller tasks, like tackling one drawer or one shelf at a time.

3. Be ruthless. Clutter over stimulates the mind, so be brave – if you haven’t used something for over a year, it’s time to let it go.

4. Use the three pile method of sorting clutter – sort everything into ‘keep’, ‘store’ or ‘get rid of’ piles, forcing you to make a decision on each and every item

5. Lose the fridge magnets. Most of the paperwork that they’re supporting is probably out of date anyway. Get into the habit of dealing with issues when they arise and then filing away the paperwork.